George Will: Obama's foreign policy rhetoric gets U.S. in trouble

5:51 PM,
Aug. 28, 2013

Written by

George Will

Barack Obama's foreign policy dream - cordial relations with a Middle East tranquilized by "smart diplomacy" - is in a death grapple with reality. His rhetorical writhings illustrate the perils of loquacity. He has a glutton's rather than a gourmet's appetite for his own rhetorical cuisine, and has talked America to the precipice of a fourth military intervention in the crescent that extends from Libya to Afghanistan.

Characterizing the 2011 Libyan project with weirdly passive syntax ("It is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions"), he explained his ...